Thursday, 11 February 2016

To mark the centenary of the Easter uprising in
Dublin, the Photographers’ Gallery in London has put on an exhibition focusing
on that historically significant event.There
are about 80 images, including ephemera, drawn from the important collection of
Irish photographs owned by Sean Sexton, who lives at Walthamstow in London.The first part examines early photography in
Ireland in order to emphasise the poor living conditions in the rural south,
and the British military presence, the asymmetric relationship symbolised by an
1861 photograph of Queen Victoria in a carriage surveying her Irish domain.The main section deals with the uprising
itself, the major personalities involved in its leadership, and the immediate
aftermath.The final section looks at
the consequences, the dividend for Sinn Fein despite not having been involved
in the uprising, the political fallout as the struggle for independence gave
rise to partition, and the bloody civil war which followed.

It is clear that photography had long been used not
only as a documentary tool but also to foster a distinctive Irish culture which
was Celtic and Catholic. That could be
achieved overtly – photographs of evictions – or implicitly, in photographs of
archaeological sites that suggested the continuity of a national identity which
pre-dated the presence of outsiders. In
that sense records of the events of 1916 were part of a continuum of
photography as propaganda in the Nationalist cause, though clearly
qualitatively different in their dramatic impact.

The uprising started on 24 April 1916, taking
advantage of British involvement in the European conflict. As one of the information panels put it,
‘England’s engagement in a protracted war provided the perfect cover for a
revolution and resurrected an old adage, “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s
opportunity”.’ Understandably with the
cumbersome technology of the period and wartime censorship, plus the dangers
inherent in standing in an exposed spot, the fighting during the six days of
the uprising itself was largely unphotographed.
Once the rebels had surrendered and the immediate dangers were over,
however, there was a concerted effort to document the damage, which was
extensive, and highlight the ham-fisted treatment of the ringleaders which
appalled a population that had been to a large extent indifferent to the
uprising itself.

The introductory panel refers to the role
photography played after the uprising ‘in evolving a set of archetypes – the
martyr, the hunger-striker, the rebel, the traitor, the spy – which paved the
way for Irish independence and helped to shape the nationalist narratives that
informed the Irish Republic.’ In
particular there was a religious undercurrent underpinning the uprising, notably
the idea of martyrdom for the executed leaders, who achieved fame after death
to an extent they had not had while alive.
The images assisted a political transition from the previous emphasis on
Home Rule by constitutional means to extra-parliamentary Republicanism. The ascendency of Catholic influence in the
movement is displayed in a photograph of a well-dressed group, those at the front
on their knees and Irish flags in evidence, captioned ‘A crowd reciting the
Rosary during the Irish Conference at Downing Street 1922’, reminding any who sought
the establishment of a secular Republic, with Church and State separated, that
they were going to be disappointed, and there are references to the way women
in general were discriminated against in the 1937 Constitution.

In a video interview, curator Luke Dodd consistently
refers to the rebels as insurgents so it is not difficult to see where his
sympathies lie, and this is not an even-handed display – one wall has even been
painted green to set off the photographs of the uprising to better effect. The show couldn’t have been more partisan if
selections from the James Connolly Songbook were playing on a loop. One would be forgiven for thinking when
reading the captions that ‘England’ was united in its desire to exploit the
Irish, ignoring the fact that large sections of the working class in Britain,
both rural and urban, also experienced extreme levels of poverty.

Similarly crude in its analysis, the exhibition
pretends to cover both sides of the religious divide but material dedicated to
Loyalism is fairly sparse, notably a couple of albums commemorating Edward
Carson and the Ulster Volunteers. One might
be forgiven for assuming that the Protestant population outside the industrial
North-East consisted entirely of wealthy landowners, and one certainly won’t
learn anything here about the ethnic cleansing of Protestants from the Free
State. There are 20,000 images in
Sexton’s collection, so this must be a very thin slice of what might have been
shown. It is enough to make the desired
political points, certainly, but a more nuanced context would have been
welcome. That would have gone some way
to reducing the sense, walking round the gallery, that the propaganda
surrounding Easter 1916 in Dublin is still deemed to have currency in 2016 in
London.

The exhibition opened on 22 January and runs until 3
April. I doubt if there are any plans to
transfer it to Belfast.

Wednesday, 3 February 2016

On 31 January 2016, Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS,
Director-General of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), circulated an important announcement concerning the Society’s Collection.This had been transferred to the National
Media Museum (NMeM) at Bradford from the RPS’s headquarters at Bath in
2003.However, the NMeM’s remit is
undergoing a substantial alteration and the RPS’s holdings will shortly be on
the move once more.As Dr Pritchard put
it, ‘The NMeM is refocusing on the science, technology and culture of light and
sound and away from the “art” of photography.’ Consequently an agreement has
been reached between the Science Museum Group – of which NMeM is part – and the
Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.Under this agreement the RPS’s Collection currently housed in Bradford
will be transferred to the V&A.This
does not just affect the RPS: anything characterised as ‘art of photography’,
will be moving to the V&A.Dr
Pritchard suggests that the operation will take place later this year.

The scale of the task is indicated in the RPS
announcement, where it states that more than 400,000 objects will be sent to
the V&A: ‘These
photographs, cameras, books and manuscript material will join the V&A’s
existing collection of 500,000 photographs to create an International
Photography Resource Centre. The new Centre will provide the public with a
world-class facility to access this consolidated collection, which will become
the single largest collection on the art of photography in the world.’ The present limited exhibition space
at the V&A devoted to photography will be doubled, which is welcome news in
itself, but to enhance access there will be a digitisation programme and
touring exhibitions around the country.

Those developments will facilitate greater usage of
the RPS’s archives than was the case in either Bath or Bradford. The RPS has been assured that its Collection
will retain its status as a distinct part of the broader V&A holding, as
was the case with the NMeM. The main
concern expressed in the RPS press release is the loss of a coherent curatorial
approach to photography, with the V&A concentrating on the art of
photography rather than its artistic application in conjunction with the
technical and scientific aspects that the NMeM was able to supply and
consideration of which is vital to a full appreciation of the RPS’s Collection.In practice one hopes that the RPS and the V&A will work
together to ensure that usage is optimised to take into account those aspects which
would otherwise fall outside the V&A’s art remit.

Overall the announcement is good news for the
V&A and researchers in the south of England, but surely not for the
NMeM. The lengthy announcement on the RPS
website highlights the key change: the NMeM is in future going to focus on STEM
subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The NMeM will retain more technical items, for example the Kodak
Museum collection, those that deal with photography’s cultural impact, such as
the Daily Herald archive, and
anything specific to Bradford. A new
‘interactive light and sound gallery’, costing £1.5m, is scheduled to open in
March 2017, a valuable initiative for public education, but there will be fewer
opportunities to undertake research there than before. With even less reason to visit the
NMeM once its archives have been reduced, its long-term future must be in
doubt; after all, it was under threat of closure three years ago when faced
with significant public spending cuts.
It is a large and expensive institution to maintain if its core function
in the area of photography is going to be to inform school parties and the
casual public about the medium’s science and technology.

The NMeM used to be called the National Museum of
Photography, Film and Television, though as its logo indicates its current
scope is broader. One has to wonder about
the long-term future of its non-photographic collections. Those relating to film and television tend to
be more about technology, so they may be safe, but the future must be less
certain. I went to the NMeM to examine
Charles Urban’s papers in my research into the early colour process Kinemacolor
(and found both staff and surroundings very pleasant); the Urban papers were
originally at the Science Museum and could easily go back there, or to the
British Film Institute. Further
announcements about the changes will be made in the coming months, but losing
such an important part of its offering feels like the thin end of the wedge for
the NMeM, however upbeat it tries to be about future developments.

Update 20 March 2016

An upsurge of opposition to the move of photographic
collections from Bradford to London has been building since it was announced at
the end of January, with politicians and figures in the art world expressing
their dismay. Now the Guardian on 17 March has an article,
‘Royal Photographic Society “not consulted over collection move”,’ sub-headed,
‘In first public statement, society says it would prefer collection to remain
at Bradford’s National Media Museum’.

The RPS’s announcement sounds slightly more
equivocal than the subheading’s bald declaration suggests because the article
goes on to say:

‘In its first public statement on the move since it
was announced in February, the society said it would prefer its much-loved
collection to remain in Bradford provided the museum remained a well-staffed
centre for photography, although it added it would not oppose the proposed move
to the V&A if certain conditions are met.’

The RPS is actually fairly glowing about the V&A. The article continues:

‘The RPS described the V&A as a “world-class
museum of international renown” and said it would have no reason to oppose the
move providing that it met four key criteria: “The collection is kept together
as a whole and not broken up; our initial agreement with the Science Museum
Group is transferred to the new custodians and honoured in full; public access
is maintained or enhanced; the collection is seen as a live collection and
continues to grow.”’

It is most unlikely that those conditions would not
be honoured by the V&A. On the other
hand, with the NMeM making staff redundant, the RPS’s requirement that the
photographic part of its operation be well-staffed could be difficult to
satisfy should the move to London be halted.
This issue was recognised by the RPS’s Director General, Michael
Pritchard, in a Guardian article on 2
February (‘Bradford photography collection move to V&A reviled as “vandalism”’),
noting declining staff and funding cuts at Bradford.

On the surface it was discourteous not to have consulted
the RPS beforehand, assuming the report is accurate, considering what a
significant proportion of the volume to be moved its holdings represents,
though given the storm of protest that has met the announcement one can
understand why the V&A and NMeM wanted to keep the matter quiet during their
discussions. The RPS Council needs to be
diplomatic, but it must surely be secretly pleased that, while expressing legitimate
concerns about the loss of a unified approach to the art and technology of
photography, its collection will be utilised far more in London than it has
been in Bradford, and the organisation will achieve a higher profile.

The Guardian
article makes much of the fact that a 2015 exhibition of RPS photographs, Drawn by Light, was visited by 29,000
people at Bradford, while 21,260 attended when it was shown at the Science
Museum. That might suggest a greater
appetite for the art of photography in the north. But then the NMeM show was free to enter,
whereas Londoners were forced to cough up £8.
If the Bradford leg had charged, one wonders how many would have gone
in. And of course someone is paying for
it, either the visitor directly or, as at Bradford, through subsidies. The NMeM is strapped for cash, and those in
favour of retaining the photographic collections there need to explain how
photography would be better served than at the V&A, with the latter’s
vastly superior resources and potential for both scholarship and public
engagement (and possibly visitors’ greater willingness to put their hands in
their pockets for an exhibition).

Bradford East’s MP got excited by the Drawn by Light numbers, declaring ‘This
revelation further illustrates the need for a full review and meaningful
consultation before any decision can be taken with regards to moving the
collection.’ I’m not sure that the
numbers actually reveal very much, other than that people will always enjoy
getting something they think is free.
And to refer to the move as ‘an appalling act of cultural vandalism’, an
‘act of cultural rape’ and ‘metropolitan cultural fascism’, as it has been variously
described, is offensive hyperbole on the part of local politicians who should
know better. If you want to see those
things, go to Syria, not the V&A.
Much of what is going to London came from there in the first place, and
London rather than Bradford, it can be easily argued, is its natural home.

Overview

Over the last few years I have written a large number of pieces, mainly reviews on aspects of the paranormal and of visual culture, but many are no longer available. This blog format is a convenient way of putting my bibliography online and adding some of the old items, plus the occasional new one.

A Note on Titles of Publications

The British and Irish Skeptic is now The Skeptic

The Newsletter of the Society for Psychical Research became The Psi Researcher and then The Paranormal Review

Many of the later items are available online, notably those written for nthposition and the SPR website. Those for The Psi Researcher, Paranormal Review and SPR Journal are available in the SPR's online library; see http://www.spr.ac.uk/ for details.